One More Simple Thing That Has Changed Our Lives

In our quest to create better family patterns that better manage our daughter's anxiety and ensure that our family life doesn't revolve around her anxiety, we decided to revisit our family rules.  We have used a responsibility chart (which largely focused on behaviors) with our daughter since she was two.  It really works well with her.  But when our son began walking and moving, the dynamic changed.  Suddenly, our daughter saw her previously immobile brother getting a lot of attention, because we were trying to keep him from killing himself.  But in her eyes, all she saw was "It's not fair."  Fairness is HUGE with her.  And her need for everything to be fair continued to "what rules her brother had to live by" vs. "what rules she had to live by".  Of course, we can't expect a 14 month old to adhere to the same rules that our then 4 year old had to live by.  So we consciously chose to not have family rules.  We just tried our best to rationalize with our daughter and explain that her younger brother wasn't capable of following the same rules that a big girl could follow.  And that, of course, we had different expectations of her when she was younger, too.  She would reluctantly accept that, but I knew in her heart it still didn't seem fair.

Well, now our son is finally three and capable of living by the same rules his sister has to live by, so we created family rules.  Not only did we define them, we wrote them down and wrote down the consequence for each rule.  I have to admit, this helps mom and dad, too.  Because I regularly reference the chart for the consequence.  Our daughter LOVES this chart.  It means everyone has the same rules (which is fair).  It's clearly stated and no one can change it.  And she knows EXACTLY what will happen to her and her brother if the rule is broken.  Here's our rule chart:

Now before you get concerned (or judge), locking the door is temporary.  For our son, it takes about 30 seconds to do the trick.  For our daughter, it takes about 5 seconds.  But yes, we do have locks on the outside of our kids' doors for this reason.  Honestly, just putting the lock there almost solves the problem alone.  We hardly ever use it with our daughter.  And they both know there are valid reasons for getting out of your bed (i.e. you're sick, the house is on fire, someone broke into the house, you pooped in your diaper).  Invalid reasons include "I hear footsteps upstairs" when the child clearly knows mommy and daddy are walking upstairs.  Or "I forgot to tell you that I need more crackers for my lunch."  Or "I don't want this book in my bed."  You know the routine. And if you didn't read my earlier post, the toys they lose go into a toy bag in the garage.  They can earn their toys back by doing a chore or helping out in some way.

We now track these behaviors on each child's behavior chart.  They get a magnet for each rule they didn't break that day.  If the child gets all of his/her magnets for the day, he/she gets a reward - an extra story at bedtime.  And we also have an added bonus, which was requested by our daughter.  We have a combined chart with just their names on it.  If the child doesn't break any rule that day, he/she gets a star on the combined chart. If the child gets all of his/her stars for the week, he/she gets an extra toy from the toy bucket on Sunday.  (Our toy bucket is a bucket of junk from the $1 aisle at Target.  Whenever we go to Target, I let them "shop" the $1 aisle and everything they choose goes in to the toy bucket to earn.)

We chose these rules, because they address the majority of moments in our house that cause extra anxiety and exhaustion (for mom and dad AND the kids).  It took our daughter 2 minutes to understand the rules and consequences.  It took our son 2 weeks.  But nevertheless, they both got it.  They just had to see the rules enforced a few times and instantly behaviors started changing.  I can also see in our daughter how affirming it is that she isn't being held to a different behavior standard than her brother is. There wasn't much we could do about that, but it's a great bonus to now have him be a little older.

So far this new rule formality has really created a positive environment for our daughter.  She loves the structure!  She loves the positive rewards that she can earn.  That is such a motivator for her.  This system has not created any extra work for us, and we are loving the new peace in our home!

This is an ongoing process, so stay tuned for more...